Human Energy Consumption Comparable To Total Heat Produced By Earth

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"In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about and express it in numbers you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be. "

--William Thomson, Lord Kelvin

Human Energy Consumption Comparable To Total Heat Produced By Earth

Wed, 08/26/2015 - 09:26

For those who insist the Earth is just way too large for human activity to make much difference, here's a curious fact.

Total human enercy production/consumption is estimated at about 17.7 TW (in 2012).
Total radioactive decay on the planet amounts to about 20 TW.
And the total heat flow from Earth's interior is about 47 TW.

I was a little surprised that human energy use was in any way comparable to the natural heat flow from the whole planet so I had to check it out, but there you are. Pretty impressive and it means, right there, that we're a significant fraction of the planet's energy budget even now. Be clear, this is still pretty tiny compared to the total energy arriving at Earth from the sun which is about 173,000 TW.

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